In a reminder to always read the small print (and forego airplane WIFI?), a Canadian man was charged $1,200 for WIFI on a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore last week. The customer has since taken to social media to vent his frustrations and to digitally shame the airline.
The man, Jeremy Gutsche, a Canadian entrepreneur, wrote about the experience on his website, trendhunter.com, after discovering that he had been charged $1,142 in data overage charges beyond the 30mb plan he had purchased for $28.99.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>GOUGED! Here's how <a href="https://twitter.com/SingaporeAir">@SingaporeAir</a> billed me $1200 for the internet: <a href="http://t.co/hTohWmy5LL">http://t.co/hTohWmy5LL</a><a href="http://t.co/RMlYPmiOmT">pic.twitter.com/RMlYPmiOmT</a></p>— Jeremy Gutsche (@jeremygutsche) <a href="https://twitter.com/jeremygutsche/status/532755355160150017">November 13, 2014</a></blockquote>
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“I wish I could blame an addiction to Netflix or some intellectual documentary that made me $1,200 smarter. However, the Singapore Airlines internet was painfully slow, so videos would be impossible and that means I didn’t get any smarter,” he wrote on his site.
“The pricing per megabyte was disclosed on sign-up. But I bought the $30 package, slept through most the flight, and really didn't think I'd end up a thousand bucks past the limit,” adding that he had only viewed 155 web pages, sent a few emails and uploaded a 4mb file.
The airline said it is following up on the complaint but it remains unclear if Gutsche misjudged how much data checking emails requires, or if the airline messed up the data usage total.
[Photo via Javier Pedreira]
